by Rob Cornell
The screen door looked like it should have creaked, but it didn’t make a sound until Gabriel let it smack shut behind him. Inside, the air smelled like goat cheese and mint. The space consisted of a single room with an L-shaped counter walling off one corner. A Mexican flag the size of a sheet for a queen-sized bed hung on the wall opposite the entrance. All the remaining walls hosted framed photographs of an infinite variety of sizes. Every photo featured various groups of smiling people—wedding photos, vacation photos, class photos from as far back as the 1930s.
The girl behind the counter didn’t look much older than Jessie. She wore a halter top that barely covered what it was made for. As Gabriel approached the counter, the mint scent grew stronger and he realized it came from the gum she chomped on. The goat cheese smell remained a mystery, and just as well.
“You want a room,” the girl said, the faintest touch of a Hispanic lilt to her voice.
“I’m looking for someone,” Gabriel said, still a little surprised at the sound of his own voice, since it now came from a teen girl. “I don’t know their name. I don’t know what they look like. I only know that I can find them here.”
The girl popped her gum and stared at him as if he had asked her to wash his underwear. “Um, okay.” Then she seemed to take a closer look at him, realized something was off about his appearance. “You sick or something?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “And this person I’m looking for? They can make me well.”
The girl’s eyes narrowed. She chewed her gum and stared. “You ain’t talking about crazy Lucia are you?”
“Perhaps. What makes Lucia so crazy?”
The girl rolled her eyes and snorted. “What ain’t crazy about Lucia?” She leaned conspiratorially over the counter. “She’s always talking about the days she did peyote with the Indians.”
“Why is that so crazy?”
“Because she says she did it back before...” She puckered her lips and scrunched her brow as if trying to remember exact words. “Before the white man scoured the land.” The girl giggled, the sound like water chugging down a drain. “That’d make her a million years old or something, right? Then she talks about how she can do magic. Says she cured Mr. Aiken’s—he’s the guy owns the gas station. She says she cured his cancer. Like it had nothing to do with him driving a hundred miles three times a week to get chemo.” She shook her head. “Bitch is crazy.”
Gabriel smiled along and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, that Crazy Lucia, what a trip. Then he asked, “Where can I find Lucia?”
The gum nearly dropped out of the girl’s gaping mouth. “Why?”
“Because I’m pretty sure she’s who I’m looking for.”
According to the story the girl at the motel offered without Gabriel’s asking, Crazy Lucia used to own and run the La Posada De Rosa motel. She was one of Sombrero’s earliest residents. For the longest time, she acted as sort of the town’s matriarch. Some people said she had founded Sombrero herself, having made her way north from Mexico on a pilgrimage. After that, details splintered into dozens of different rumors. Some claimed Lucia had made a pact with Satan for immortality. Others had her coming to Sombrero long after it had been founded, only to be abandoned there by a lover.
When Gabriel pressed about how such a small town could not keep track of how one of its residents came to live there, the girl shrugged her skinny tan shoulders and gave him an answer that confirmed that Lucia was the one he sought.
“I don’t know. It’s like no one can remember for some reason.”
Using Gabriel’s atlas, the girl pointed out where Lucia lived on the outskirts of town. “You can’t miss it. Just pass everything else in town, then make a left onto the tiny dirt road. It winds around a bit, but her place is at the very end. Don’t let it fool ya, though. I don’t know how she affords a house like that, but she’s still fucking nuts.”
As Gabriel pulled up to what could only be described as a desert palace, he realized what the girl had meant. Usually, the local recluse and mystic lived in humble accommodations. Lucia, however, appeared to have invested well at some point. The mansion looked to hold at least four-thousand square feet. The outside, painted in garish hues of blue and green, looked untouched by the desert’s climate. The windows sparkled. And there were a lot of windows, giving the building a greenhouse-like appearance.
All manner of desert plant decorated the front of the house, many of them prickly. Tall cacti lined the brick approach like guards. While walking between them, Gabriel felt like one of the cacti might reach out with a quilled hand and grab hold with a piercing grip.
He made it to the front door without incident.
She was in there. He could sense her power. And she was watching him. On instinct, he didn’t bother to knock. He tried the door and it opened for him.
Inside, the open floor plan plus all the windows gave the sense that the space belonged as much to the desert as the house. The hardwood floors shined as if freshly polished. The decor leaned toward a generic southwestern style, lots of turquoise and earth tones. The only sound came from the fire crackling in an old-fashioned wood burning stove. Night began to settle in the desert and it had felt chilly coming in. Lucia was already prepared for the desert winter evening.
No sign of the woman, though. No sign of anything besides the potted plants lining the windowsills and the end tables.
“Hello?” he called. His girlish voice echoed in the wide space.
A spiral staircase only a few steps from the entrance led to the upper story. Gabriel moved closer and peered up, but couldn’t see anything besides the ceiling of the second floor.
“Lucia,” he called again. “I know you’re home. I know who you are.”
“Do you?”
Not since the days he lived with Father had Gabriel felt such a start. His chest felt near to burst. His breath caught in his throat. He spun toward the voice. Somehow the woman had snuck in behind him, as if she had shadowed his steps into the house. She stood in the open doorway, a smile so ragged with broken teeth and her face so leathered by the sun her head looked like a Jack O’ Lantern planted on the shoulders of a fat woman.
Her size was the second most notable thing about her. She had to have weighed four-hundred pounds. She wore a massive Tweety Bird t-shirt that could have doubled as a tent for two normal-sized adults. Her bosom was especially pronounced, and hung to her waist like a second stomach.
The woman laughed. Every part of her jiggled. Her breath smelled like nutmeg. Her laughing petered out as her eyes took Gabriel in. What must have looked like an ordinary young girl from behind now looked quite different to her face-to-face.
“What are you?”
It was Gabriel’s turn to smile. He made sure to show some face. With one hand he smeared away the makeup on his cheeks. “Are you Lucia?”
The woman crossed herself and backed away, crossing out into the twilight on her front porch. “How can you enter my home? You are uninvited?”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Come now. Are you really that unversed?” This whole trip looked like a waste of his time. Damn, he’d been certain this location had a stronger supernatural presence. Long ago, he and Otto had tracked and tagged as many supernatural strong points across the nation as they could find. Thus they would always know where to go to find power if they needed it.
Surely, their readings couldn’t have meant this woman alone.
The information was old. Things might have changed.
“You travel by light,” she said, pointing toward the sky with a trembling hand. “This I know is impossible.”
Her Hispanic accent thickened with her fear.
Gabriel nodded. “For most like me, it is impossible. I am no simple vampire.”
“Get out of my home, demon.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I need your help.”
“Help?” She scooted away while digging for something underneath the shirt that hung down to her kn
ees. “I will not aid a demon.” Finally she pulled loose a rosary. The beads clacked together as she flung the rosary free from her pocket. She held the cross out in front of her as if wielding a knife. “Away with you.”
“I’m afraid those don’t work on me either.”
Her eyes went wide. A vein in her fleshy neck throbbed. She began mumbling something in Spanish.
Gabriel held out a hand, trying to appear as disarming as possible. He looked like a teen girl. How threatening could he truly be? “Please help me. A terrible creature turned me into what you see before I ever had the chance at womanhood. If you could just—”
“No!” Her ruddy face creased in several places like crumpled felt. Her eyes flashed. “You are no young girl. I see through you. What’s inside is older...and dark.”
Interesting. So she did have some talent. How far would it take him, though?
“Think of me what you will,” he said. “All I want is a doorway.”
She looked up at the darkening sky as if seeking guidance from a higher power. The woman knew magic was real and within her, but like many mortals she had cluttered her talent with unnecessary rules and superstition. Why couldn’t they all learn? Get the blood, and the rest falls into place.
“You won’t find answers up there.”
She snapped her gaze back to him. “What do you mean by doorway?”
“Tell me, Lucia. Have you ever traveled to a faraway place without having to leave your home?”
“You mean a spirit walk?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Something like that.”
“You want to take a spirit walk?”
“I want to improve your spirit walk. I want you to help me take my body along with my spirit.” Millions of “spirits” in truth. But he didn’t want to overwhelm her with details.
The wrinkles in her leathery face changed, marking her as confused. She still held the rosary and began worrying its beads between a thumb and forefinger. “What you seek is not possible.”
“The difference between possible and impossible is merely a matter of commitment, dear Lucia. If the spirit can travel, so can the body.” And the only reason he needed her help for such a thing was because a body needed to be sent. One cannot send oneself. A quirk of magical physics, but one he’d learn long ago. Otherwise, people with supernatural ability would pop in and out everywhere whenever it pleased them. It was the reason the network of interdemnsional portals was created across the world. Something Gabriel would have used if Lockman and his people hadn’t commandeered the entire network.
Lucia still didn’t understand. She rubbed at her beads and gaped at Gabriel. “A vampire has no spirit to travel. You are soulless.”
A good point, if he had been a run-of-the-mill vampire. But he had helped dear little Jessie keep her soul after she was turned. This trick had allowed his, and all the others, remain as well. “Madame, if you haven’t already guessed, there is more to me than my vampirism. I have a soul. I have many, in fact.”
She gasped, though it sounded like a belch.
Again, Gabriel reached out his hand. He beckoned her to him. “Come in, my dear. I have no urge to do you harm. As I said, I need your help.”
She shook her head. “Your soul is dark. You are unnatural.”
Gabriel closed his eyes. Why couldn’t he have found a real practitioner? Any true mystic would have jumped at the chance to try and teleport a soul-endowed vampire through space-time. Surely. What an exciting experiment. Lucia was yet another example of what was wrong with the world and what needed fixing.
“I don’t have time to find another practitioner. You will help me.”
He stepped forward.
Lucia matched his step with one backward. Meanwhile, she started digging under her shirt again. What now? A vial of holy water?
She drew a gun. A little revolver with a snub nose. She dropped the rosary to the porch and held the gun in both hands, aimed at Gabriel. Her hands shook so terribly, Gabriel doubted she could hit him even with only the few feet between them.
“Get out of my house.”
“Even if your bullets are silver, they won’t hurt me.”
She rattled something off in Spanish, spittle flinging from her lips.
Things not working out so well for ya, huh?
Gabriel caught himself growling. He did not need the girl’s scratchy little voice in his head right now. He gave her a psychic shove to drive her back to the dark, silent place she hid in between smart-mouthed quips.
That tickled a little, she replied. I think you lose a little control when you’re pissed. That’s good to know.
“Shut up,” he screamed.
The outburst made Lucia start. Her finger twitched on the trigger and the gun went off. Despite her unsteady hands, the bullet caught Gabriel in the side of the neck. The slug lodged itself there. Blood pumped from the hole. He felt it run down and follow the curve of his shoulder.
“Oh, Lucia,” he said. Some blood leaked into his throat, making his voice gurgle. He stuck his finger in the hole in his neck and hooked the slug out. He gave it a cursory glance—not even silver, the foolish woman—and flicked it at Lucia like a bloody booger.
The slug bounced off her bosom, leaving a splat of blood on Tweety Bird’s face.
She jerked at the impact. Her eyes bulged. The vein in her neck had doubled in size. She let the gun drop from her hands. It clattered on the brick porch. Then she turned and tried to run. What qualifies as running for a four-hundred-pound woman looks more like a twist and shuffle. She made it less than a dozen steps before Gabriel leaped across the distance between them and landed on her back.
Amazingly, the woman kept her feet. She tried to swing Gabriel off of her, but Gabriel had all the strength and leverage in this fight. He wrapped his arms around her neck and planted his heels into her thighs. Then he squeezed his arms closed slowly. He didn’t intend to crush her windpipe, though he could have gone as far as tearing off her head like he had that insufferable priest. He only squeezed enough to cut the blood flow to her brain.
The woman’s heart, both physically and metaphorically, proved strong. She kept her feet and continued to twist back and forth in an effort to throw him off. She lasted about twenty seconds before finally falling to her knees. Another ten seconds before she flopped to her side and passed out.
To get out from under her, Gabriel had to roll into one of the cactus sentries along the approach. The prickers pierced through the back of his shirt. They didn’t hurt as much as itched and annoyed. Unlike the hole in his neck, which did burn a little even as it had started to close up. He’d made the wound bigger digging the slug out, but with the slug out, it meant the wound could heal without obstruction and go back as if he’d never been shot in the first place.
He stood over Lucia and gazed down at her. Her heavy bosom rose and fell. Still breathing. Still alive. But what was the point? If he couldn’t convince her to help him, he would have no choice but to move on and find someone who would. At this rate, it could be a week or more before he reached Barrow, Alaska. He wanted to get there before daylight returned and the vampires dispersed. Lockman and his allies’ biggest fear was for another leader to take charge of a vampire army. They worried about someone like the king in New Orleans. Just another vampire, no matter how ancient and powerful.
They didn’t realize that the next great vampire leader would be their precious Chosen One.
The opportunity in Alaska was another of destiny’s cogs. It was Gabriel’s responsibility to fulfill that destiny.
He kicked the unconscious woman.
She would help him. He would compel her. He just had to listen to the millions of ancient voices. Just as they had given him the secret to sun walking, they would tell him how to turn a mortal into a slave.
One more body to control, the girl piped up. You think you can handle that?
You forget, he thought as he dragged Lucia back to the house. I don’t control your body. Your body belongs
to me.
That’s not what it seemed like to me a little bit ago. Seems like you’re still learning to drive this thing. And trust me, freak. First chance I get, I’m taking back the wheel.
Gabriel heaved Lucia into the house and kicked the door shut. We’ll see about that.
Bet your ass we will.
Chapter Twenty-Six
They brought Terrance Obstermeyer into the War Room, just Adam and Lockman. Lockman took his seat where he had left his laptop and, based on the steam leaking from the spout, a fresh thermos of coffee courtesy of the gnomes.
Obstermeyer looked like a frightened fish trapped in a bowl too small. His cheeks puffed and his eyes bulged. His hair stuck out in curled spikes. His rumpled shirt looked slept in. He looked back and forth between Lockman and Adam as if they had asked him to solve world hunger in the next fifteen minutes. Maybe that’s essentially what they had asked him.
Adam sat across the table from Lockman. The arrangement had the look of a job interview. Lockman supposed that’s exactly what it was. Poor Obstermeyer and his surprised fish face didn’t seem up to the challenge.
“You have to understand,” he said. “This...I’ve been studying the quantum mechanics of interdimensional portals since I graduated from MIT. I was recruited by a special government agency to study wormholes.” Lockman knew this, as that was the same Agency Lockman had worked for and what led to Obstermeyer ending up with them now. “Because up until that point, that’s what I knew existed. Wormholes. Then I learn about our access to parallel dimensions and magic portals and spooks and specters. What happened to the science? That’s what I’d like to know.”
Lockman waited to see if Obstermeyer would find his way back on topic.
Obstermeyer chewed on his thumbnail instead.
Lockman threw Adam a glance that said You sure about this guy?
The ogre nodded. “Tell Mr. Lockman about your latest findings.”
The physicist finished chewing his thumbnail, spit it out, and started in on his pinky. He spoke as he chewed. “There are similar properties to what we define as wormholes and the portals. Without getting all technical, the portals defy physics because of their stable nature. These kinds of things simply should not be able to exist. But their general make up mocks the structure of a theoretical wormhole.”
